<nettime> no people - Public Offering dig [graham, brozefsky]

["nettime's_flametrader" <nettime-l@bbs.thing.net>]

   Re: <nettime> Public Offering digest [dery, sondheim]                           
     Phil Graham <phil.graham@mailbox.uq.edu.au>                                     

   Re: <nettime> no people.                                                        
     Craig Brozefsky <craig@red-bean.com>                                            



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Date: Tue, 22 May 2001 00:29:33 +1000
From: Phil Graham <phil.graham@mailbox.uq.edu.au>
Subject: Re: <nettime> Public Offering digest [dery, sondheim]

At 01:38 PM 5/21/01 -0400, Mark wrote:
>a multitude of intellectual sins ... can usually be replaced by clearer 
>words that cost less ("textual
>practice" = *writing*). More often than not, they amount to intellectual
>handwaving.

This reminds me of the Newspeak enthusiast --- "we're getting rid of 
*thousands* of useless words" --- since when has "textual practice" meant 
"writing"?

>In any event, if you're arguing for a Nettime that makes room for a vibrant
>profusion of ideas and opinions, then we're in complete agreement. If, on
>the other hand, you're defending your---and my---right to be willfully
>obscure, I'm afraid I can't agree.

I found nothing obscure in the post. I enjoyed it and it rsonated with me.

>Is there room, here, for "many modes of
>thinking, working through ideas"? No question. Nonetheless, I refuse to
>unplug my critical faculties in the name of a faux populism that throws wide
>the floodgates to any and every post.

Are you going to appoint yourself censor, then? Pass judgement on the 
appropriately economic use of terminologies that don't confuse you?

>Let a billion flowers bloom, and you
>have intellectual kudzu. We live in an attention economy. Time-starved and
>data-glutted, most of us appreciate posts that don't have to be read with a
>weed-whacker in one hand.

If your attention is overtaxed, there's always the delete button. Be as 
juducious as you like.

>Nettime, as its .sig file suggests, is "a
>moderated mailing list for net criticism, collaborative text filtering and
>cultural politics of the nets."

By that measure, I can't think of anything more appropriate than the "no 
people" post, since the technology is anthropomorphised ad absurdum.

>There's no mention of ePoetry or ASCII art or my own private turbo-blog, 
>much as
>that pains me. Whatever else it is, Nettime is a forum for public discourse.
>*Public*, not private.

It *was* public. It *is* public. It *is* discourse.

>But if you believe your thoughts matter, don't cloak them in the 
>intellectual equivalent of a cloud
>of squid ink; make them transparent to me.

Why *you*? Why not *me*?

I don't understand *you* or what you are saying.

>A parting thought: If you "feel, like many others, outside of the nettime
>mainstream," you may want to consider the possibility that Nettime *has* no
>mainstream. We're *all* on the outside, Alan. Which is Nettime's greatest
>strength---or one of them.

Yup, that's a strength. But are we ALL on the outside? If so, what are we 
on the outside of? Who are the insiders in this public discourse?

regards,
Phil



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Date: 20 May 2001 22:57:10 -0500
From: Craig Brozefsky <craig@red-bean.com>
Subject: Re: <nettime> no people.

"Mark Dery" <markdery@mindspring.com> writes:

> Pardon my cluelessness, but what, exactly, is this? Too much of Nettime is
> beginning to feel like an in joke for people who live their lives inside
> invisible quotation marks.

I don't know, but I took it as a contemplative peice about identity.
In this case it was reverse-anthropomorphism, but it made me think
about the other identities I assign to people when I read them online.
For instance, Alan is "the bizarre, sometimes unreadable, net-poet
with a kind heart".  You might be "the no-nonsense cyber-journalist,
his hard-nosed commentary cutting swaths thru hype".  

Or maybe I was wrong, Alan could be "the net-artist crawling up his
own ass, his irony-field collapsing like a gravity well", and you
could be "the crapulent hack, scouring the social field for an
article's worth of cynic-fodder".

I doubt any of those are right.  I guess that means it was art, maybe
net-art or something.  One man's Marty Stoufer is another man's
Madison Ave. copywriter.

Craig "the lowly theory-worker, cooking up some pie-filler content
while lamenting his near-anonymous stature" Brozefsky

- --  
Craig Brozefsky                             <craig@red-bean.com>
                                  http://www.red-bean.com/~craig 
"Revolution begins by giving things and social relationships
 their real names".                           --  L. Trotsky 


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